Proposal · City of London Corporation

A cohesive response for the City of London.

Knox's response supporting the City of London's capacity, uplifting capability and providing the expertise to deliver best-in-class campaigns.

Explore the response See the investment
The response at a glance

Each strand can stand alone or run together. Bucket 3 threads through the others, turning live campaign work into lasting capability for the Corporation's own team.

Bucket 1

Financial & professional services

A 12-month awareness and influence campaign cementing the City's role in financial and professional services.

From £81k → £200k
 Bucket 2a

Museum of London opening

Creative and content delivery support for the museum launch, built to activate quickly and hit the ground running.

From £52k → £128k
 Bucket 2b

City of London Police

Reinforcing the City Police's unique identity ahead of the policing review expected late summer 2026.

From £52k → £140k
 Bucket 3

Capability & knowledge transfer

A dedicated programme leaving the Corporation's team materially stronger, with reusable tools and frameworks.

£13k at cost, alongside other work
Bucket 1

Financial and professional services campaign

Knox will design and deliver a new campaign that cements the City Corporation's unique role in the financial and professional services sector, positioning the City as an ambassador of the UK while being a steward of growth and progress. The plan runs discovery and research through to evaluation across twelve months, delivered as a sustained campaign rather than a single activation.

Audience strategy

  • Prioritising HM Treasury, the Department for Business and Trade, and senior Whitehall officials with influence over financial services policy
  • Alongside domestic audiences, international investor and overseas government audiences, given the ambassador framing
  • Delivered in parallel with the Lord Mayor and Fragmented Finance workstreams, coordinated to keep activity aligned and avoid duplication

Packages

Bronze
£81k
+ £2k ad spend
  • Discovery findings and stakeholder engagement summary (research piece)
  • Campaign strategy and communications framework, with clear objectives including KPIs
  • A campaign evaluation framework
  • Performance reporting and optimisation recommendations, issued at each monthly checkpoint
  • Decision log and approval framework that is to be handed over as a governance tool for future campaigns
  • Campaign delivery roadmap and governance approach
  • Content strategy
  • Content calendar updated weekly (grid)
  • Creative concepts and campaign production of assets aligned to the CoL calendar (5 videos, 10 graphics)
  • Paid social targeted amplification of campaign content
  • End of campaign evaluation report
Silver
£128k
+ £15k ads & influencers budget
Everything in Bronze, plus
  • Messaging architecture workshop which will be delivered as a reusable template for future work
  • A programme of guest podcast placements across the year timed to key calendar moments including the Mansion House speech and both Global Financial Centres Index releases
  • Influencer partnerships with a small number of relevant voices in financial services, business and City
  • A media and spokesperson briefing pack, so Corporation spokespeople are ready to go whenever a broadcast/podcast or commentator opportunity comes up
  • Paid social strategy and activation of a hypertargeting campaign (3 months)
  • Production of campaign core assets: 10 videos, 36 graphics
Gold
£200k
Full-year production capacity
Everything in Silver, plus
  • A ramped-up production capacity to sustain higher volume throughout the full year (5 videos, and 5 graphics per month)
  • A sustained network of aligned business leader and City commentator voices, briefed and activated at key point through quarterly intervals across the year
  • Add on: we will test all messaging through focus groups and use the results to inform our delivery. It is important that we have distinct threads of messaging for the domestic and international campaigns. Cost to be discussed if you wish to conduct this element.

Timeline · 12-month campaign

Month 1
  • Project initiation and kick-off meetings with core stakeholders
  • Stakeholder mapping across sponsors, contributors and adjacent workstreams
  • Channel and sentiment baseline audit
  • Audience segmentation drafted for eg. domestic (HM Treasury, DBT, senior Whitehall officials) and international (overseas investors, foreign government audiences)
  • Weekly working-level catch-ups begin
Month 2
  • 1:1 and small-group discovery interviews, plus synthesis workshop to pressure-test emerging themes
  • Campaign strategy, communications framework and messaging architecture drafted
  • Decision log and approval framework established
  • Low-risk owned-channel content begins production in parallel, giving visible activity ahead of full delivery
  • Weekly working-level catch-ups continue
  • Bucket 3: messaging architecture workshop scoped
Month 3
  • Strategy, communications framework and messaging architecture signed off
  • Campaign plan, delivery roadmap and content calendar (grid) signed off
  • Creative concepts and hero asset production begins
  • Delivery goes live: content grid live, quick-win content from month 2 continues running
  • Weekly working-level catch-ups continue
  • Quarterly sponsor review 1
  • Add on: focus group testing on domestic and international messaging threads
Month 4
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Production of campaign hero assets begins
  • Silver: groundwork for guest podcast placements and commentator network
  • Dependency: legal and compliance clearance confirmed before named-official targeting begins
  • Bucket 3: decision log and governance tools handed over as reusable templates
Month 5
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Silver: guest podcast placements and influencer partnerships active (finance and business commentary)
  • Calendar moment: UK FinTech Week and Innovate Finance Global Summit at the Guildhall, landing roughly two months into live delivery rather than at a standing start
Month 6
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Calendar moment: spring Global Financial Centres Index release
  • Quarterly checkpoint 2: performance reporting and optimisation
Month 7
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Calendar moment: Mansion House speech, guest podcast placement timed to follow
Month 8
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Bucket 3: mid-campaign coaching session for the Corporation team
  • Silver: media and spokesperson briefing pack template delivered
Month 9
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Quarterly checkpoint 3: performance reporting and optimisation
Month 10
  • Content grid live, weekly creative briefings
  • Calendar moment: Autumn Budget, reactive capacity held
Month 11
  • Content grid live
  • Calendar moment: Lord Mayor's Show and Silent Ceremony, coinciding with the London Museum opening (busiest fortnight across both Bucket 1 and Bucket 2)
  • Silver: autumn Global Financial Centres Index release, guest podcast placement timed to follow
  • Buffer note: both this date and the Show date are provisional at time of writing
  • Quarterly checkpoint 4
Month 12
  • Final content delivery and grid wind-down
  • Bucket 3: capability transfer review, checking adoption of decision log, governance tools and messaging template
  • End of campaign evaluation report, lessons learned and recommendations for future phases

Ways of working

Given that this will be an awareness and influence campaign shaped by initial research rather than a preset brief, our approach will be stakeholder-led throughout.

Account set-up

  • Kick-off and discovery meeting
  • 1:1 meetings with key stakeholders, including sponsors, contributors and adjacent workstreams (Fragmented Finance). We will also draw on spokesperson profiles already built for the Corporation in previous proposals
  • 1:1 and small-group discovery interviews to surface existing thinking, tensions, friction and areas of consensus

Key deliverables (strategy and messaging architecture)

  • Workshop to pressure-test emerging themes with stakeholders before drafting the final strategy
  • Messaging architecture co-created and validated with sponsors to avoid late-stage rewrites
  • Sign-off meeting with stakeholders

Meeting cadence

  • Weekly catch-up with the content and digital teams to go through the grid, briefs and optimisations
  • Monthly check-in with the senior team, covering all delivery strands
  • Monthly report

Sign-off

  • A clear decision process and log, so all sign-off rationale is visible to all stakeholders, not just those in the room
  • We will follow your sign-off processes; the leaner these are, the more effective they will be, but we're experienced navigating complex organisations with multiple stakeholders

Rapid delivery framework

  • Upon commission, we will be immediately available to join existing planning and provide tactical advice on work already in progress, drawing on our experience of similar projects
  • As soon as commissioned, we will have capacity to support content creation, so live opportunities, including the Lord Mayor's international ambassadorial calendar, can be treated as a content engine from day one

Dependencies

  • Contract start date and sign-off timing is followed, as every date in the calendar-aligned plan depends on month 1 discovery beginning on schedule
  • Timely access to sponsors and stakeholders during the discovery and research process
  • Confirmed availability and willingness of named spokespeople, particularly Chris Hayward and the Lord Mayor's office, to participate at the level the plan assumes
  • Clarity from the Lord Mayor's team on Fragmented Finance positioning before messaging is finalised
  • Access to the Corporation's own channel analytics and any existing audience or CRM data, needed for the proposed audience targeting approach
  • A legal or compliance clearance process for content referencing government, Treasury or live policy positions
  • For Silver and Gold, third-party podcast platforms and commentator voices agreeing to terms, timing and cost
  • Confirmation of exact 2026/27 dates for the Lord Mayor's Show and the autumn Global Financial Centres Index release, both provisional at time of writing

Assumptions

  • We are working on the assumption that this is a 12-month campaign
  • Production capacity: if you go ahead with the Bronze package, success will be heavily dependent on CoL capacity and capability to execute the briefs. We will support, provide feedback and upskill the team to make this possible, but our recommendation would be the Silver or Gold tier if you have concerns about the team's capacity to execute
  • Kick-off meetings: given the complex stakeholder landscape it is critical we are able to meet with all key stakeholders as early as possible, as strategic work will hinge on the insights from those meetings
  • Approvals: timely approval of assets
  • We assume that targeting named officials and MPs directly is compliant with the CoL's policies for this campaign

Team & senior oversight

Account lead
Brandon Hattiloney
Senior oversight
Laura Wright
Account manager
Saira Banu
Paid social
Steve Hawkins
Creative strategy
Rowen Lawson, James Fisk
Creative production
Seth Carter, Leo Burton
Brand and design
Charles Johnson

Measurement & evaluation

Baseline

  • Thorough channel and sentiment audit in month 1, the starting point everything is measured against

Core metrics

  • Reach and engagement on owned content
  • Awareness and share of voice among target government and City audiences
  • Further KPIs set after stakeholder engagement

Silver-specific & cadence

  • Guest podcast reach and listen-through rate
  • Commentator network activation and amplification reach
  • Monthly optimisation checkpoints; end-of-campaign report
Bucket 2a · Active campaign support

Museum of London opening

Our role is to provide expertise in content strategy, creative and campaign delivery, translating your objectives into rigorous, effective and measurable delivery. With the museum opening in November, it is essential we activate quickly and hit the ground running, developing the digital communications strategy and creative platform within three weeks of starting.

Packages

Bronze
£52k
Strategy & creative platform
  • Development of a full digital communications strategy for the launch, including role of channels, objectives, audiences and KPIs
  • Development of a creative platform for the City's digital campaign around the museum
  • Content grid including publishing schedule
  • Bi-weekly creative briefing for teams to execute
  • Bi-weekly reporting and optimisation
  • Full post-campaign evaluation (also to be used as a framework for upskilling CoL team)
Silver
£76k
Ongoing content production
Everything in Bronze, plus
  • Content creation - 3 pieces per week
Gold
£128k
+ £12k ads & influencers budget
Everything in Silver, plus
  • Influencer strategy and activation (2 months)
  • Content creation extended - 6 pieces per week
  • Paid amplification campaign (2 months)

Timeline · 6-month campaign

Month 1August
  • Project initiation; communications strategy and creative platform development
Month 2September
  • Strategy, creative platform and evaluation framework signed off
  • Influencer strategy development; content grid live; bi-weekly briefings and evaluation begin
Month 3October
  • Influencer strategy and paid amplification plan signed off
  • Content grid live, content creation continues, bi-weekly evaluation
Month 4November, launch
  • Gold tier: influencer activation
  • Content grid live, content creation continues, bi-weekly evaluation
Month 5December
  • Gold tier: influencer activation continues
  • Content grid live, content creation continues, bi-weekly evaluation
Month 6January
  • Content grid live, content creation continues
  • End of campaign report

Ways of working

We will build our systems around how you like to work; we are happy to integrate into existing meetings and processes as appropriate and can provide an in-office presence for key moments, where this would be helpful. Below is a rough structure of how we would manage ways of working if starting from a blank slate.

Account set-up

  • Kickoff and discovery meeting
  • 1-1 meetings with key stakeholders

Key deliverables (strategy and creative platform)

  • Initial meeting to present first draft of strategy
  • Sign-off meeting with stakeholders

Meeting cadence

  • Weekly catch-up with the content and digital teams to go through the grid, briefs and optimisations
  • Monthly check-in with the senior team (this can cover all delivery strands)
  • Monthly report

Sign-off

  • We will follow your sign-off processes; the leaner these are, the more effective they will be, but we understand and are experienced in navigating complex organisations with multiple stakeholders

Rapid delivery framework

  • Upon commission, we will be immediately available to join existing planning around the museum launch, drawing on our experience of other similar projects to provide tactical advice for work already in progress
  • In parallel, we will develop the digital communications strategy and creative platform within 3 weeks of the start of our relationship. As soon as we are commissioned, we have capacity to support briefing and content creation, so live opportunities can be taken right away

Dependencies

  • Production capacity: if you go ahead with the Bronze package, success will be heavily dependent on CoL capacity and capability to execute the briefs. We will support, provide feedback and upskill the team to make this possible, but our recommendation would be the Silver or Gold tier if you have concerns about the team's capacity to execute
  • Kick-off meetings: given the complex stakeholder landscape it is critical we are able to meet with all key stakeholders as early as possible, as strategic work will hinge on the insights from those meetings
  • Approvals: timely approval of assets
  • Access to the Corporation's own channel analytics and any existing audience or CRM data, needed for the proposed audience targeting approach

Assumptions

  • We are working on the assumption that this is a 6-month campaign
  • The Museum's Marketing and Communications department will share their marketing plan so we can avoid duplication and ensure differential content
  • We don't expect constraints with reasonable access to or requests from the Museum
  • The audience for this campaign is broad, covering those that live in, work in or visit the city (Objective 2), as well as key opinion-shaping and decision-making audiences such as media, officials and politicians in Westminster and City Hall (Objective 1)
  • There will be a web page to drive traffic from paid amplification too

Team & senior oversight

Account lead
Brandon Hattiloney
Account manager
Saira Banu
Paid social
Steve Hawkins
Creative strategy
Rowen Lawson, James Fisk
Creative production
Seth Carter, Leo Burton
Brand and design
Charles Johnson

Measurement & evaluation

Full measurement framework will be provided in M-2 as part of the scope; below are indicative metrics.

Organic content

  • Engagement (KPI 3× CoL benchmark)
  • Virality score (reach/followers)
  • Online sentiment
  • Stakeholder feedback

Influencer

  • Number of pieces of content generated
  • Reach
  • Engagement

Paid

  • Cost per engagement
  • Site clicks (TBC)
Bucket 2b · Active campaign support

City of London Police

Our role is to provide expertise in content strategy, creative, digital targeting and campaign delivery, influencing decision makers in Westminster to retain the independence of the City of London Police. With the review on policing expected late summer 2026, we are keen to reinforce the City Police's unique identity and contribution to the City.

Packages

Bronze
£52k
Strategy & content franchises
  • Development of a full digital communications strategy for the campaign, including role of channels, objectives, audiences and KPIs
  • Development of 3 bespoke content franchises for CoL Police
  • Development of a content grid including publishing schedule
  • Bi-weekly creative briefing for teams to execute
  • Bi-weekly reporting and optimisation
  • Full post-campaign evaluation (also to be used as a framework for upskilling CoL team)
Silver
£88k
+ £7k ads
Everything in Bronze, plus
  • Content creation 4 video assets and 12 static assets monthly
  • Paid hypertargeting campaign to reach key audiences in Westminster post the release of the review on policing
Gold
£140k
+ £12k influencers budget
Everything in Silver, plus
  • Influencer strategy and activation
  • Reactive digital campaign infrastructure to provide support to CoL Police to maximise emerging news as a platform for reactive social

Timeline · 6-month campaign

Month 1August
  • Project initiation; communications strategy and content franchise development
  • Content grid and bi-weekly briefings commence
  • Gold tier: reactive digital campaign infrastructure set up
Month 2September
  • Strategy and content franchises signed off; content creation commences
  • Hypertargeting campaign strategy approved; bi-weekly reporting and optimisation commence
Month 3October
  • Paid hypertargeting campaign activated
  • Gold tier: influencer activation outreach begins
Month 4November
  • Paid hypertargeting campaign continues
  • Gold tier: influencer activation outreach continues
Month 5December
  • Gold tier: influencer content goes live
  • Content creation and bi-weekly reporting continue
Month 6January
  • Paid hypertargeting campaign resumes
  • End of campaign report, impact and learning presented

Ways of working

We will build our systems around how you like to work, so we are happy to integrate into existing meetings and processes as appropriate and can provide an in-office presence for key moments, where this would be helpful. Below is a rough structure of how we would manage ways of working if starting from a blank slate.

Account set-up

  • Kickoff and discovery meeting
  • 1-1 meetings with key stakeholders

Key deliverables (strategy)

  • Initial meeting to present first draft of strategy
  • Sign-off meeting with stakeholders

Meeting cadence

  • Bi-weekly catch-up with the content and digital teams to go through the grid, briefs and optimisations
  • Monthly check-in with the senior team (this can cover all delivery strands)
  • Monthly report

Sign-off

  • We will follow your sign-off processes; the leaner these are, the more effective they will be, but we understand and are experienced in navigating complex organisations with multiple stakeholders

Rapid delivery framework

  • Upon commission, we will be immediately available to join existing planning around the CoL Police campaign, drawing on our experience of other similar projects to provide tactical advice for work already in progress
  • In parallel, we will develop the digital communications strategy within 4 weeks of the start of our relationship. As soon as we are commissioned, we have capacity to support briefing and content creation, so live opportunities can be taken right away

Dependencies

  • Production capacity: if you go ahead with the Bronze package, success will be heavily dependent on CoL police capacity and capability to execute the briefs. We will support, provide feedback and upskill the team to make this possible, but our recommendation would be the Silver or Gold tier if you have concerns about the team's capacity to execute
  • Kick-off meetings: given the complex stakeholder landscape it is critical we are able to meet with all key stakeholders as early as possible, as strategic work will hinge on the insights from those meetings
  • Approvals: timely approval of assets

Assumptions

  • We are working on the assumption that this is a 6-month campaign
  • We don't expect constraints with reasonable access to Police and supportive voices in the City
  • Key target audience is decision makers in Westminster, with businesses and the general public within the city as a secondary audience

Team & senior oversight

Account lead
Brandon Hattiloney
Senior oversight
Jock McMillan
Account manager
Saira Banu
Paid social
Steve Hawkins
Creative strategy
Rowen Lawson, James Fisk
Creative production
Seth Carter, Leo Burton
Brand and design
Charles Johnson

Measurement & evaluation

Full measurement framework will be provided in September as part of the strategy; below are indicative metrics.

Organic content

  • Engagement
  • Virality score (reach/followers)
  • Online sentiment
  • Stakeholder feedback

Influencer

  • Number of pieces of content generated
  • Reach
  • Engagement

Paid

  • Cost per engagement
  • Site clicks (TBC)
Bucket 3

Capability building and knowledge transfer

A dedicated capability building programme for City of London colleagues. Its purpose is to leave the Corporation's communications and digital team materially stronger by the end of Knox's contract, with practical tools, sharper skills and reusable frameworks they can use to run digital campaigns independently. Where it touches live campaign work in Buckets 1 and 2 that is deliberate, as real material makes for better training than hypothetical projects.

Delivered at cost · £13k

Bucket 3 is delivered at cost, provided it is not taken as a standalone item. It has its own objectives, deliverables and success metrics.

Deliverables signposted through Buckets 1 & 2

Governance

  • Decision log and approval framework (Bucket 1, Bronze), handed over as a reusable governance tool

Messaging

  • Messaging architecture workshop and template (Bucket 1, Silver)

Evaluation

  • Post-campaign evaluation frameworks for the Museum and Police strands (Bucket 2, Bronze), each built to double as an upskilling document

Deliverables bespoke to this bucket

Skills & workshops

  • A capability audit in month 1, assessing current skills, tools and confidence to establish a baseline
  • Three in-person workshops for Corporation colleagues, scoped against the gaps the audit identifies
  • Ongoing ad-hoc creative critique and content review
  • Practical AI training focused on where it genuinely helps, first-draft research synthesis, content ideation and admin, alongside a clear guide to where it does not, so public-facing content keeps a distinct, credible institutional voice

Templates, toolkits & frameworks

  • Campaign management templates: a campaign brief template, a sign-off map (who does the work, approves, is consulted or informed), and a risk and dependency tracker
  • Content planning: the content grid and publishing schedule format, format-specific content brief templates (video, graphics, written), and a short social media best-practice document
  • Measurement guidance: a simple KPI framework template and a campaign reporting template

Ways of working & timetable

Ways of working

  • A dedicated exploratory meeting with the Corporation team, once we have identified the gaps with stakeholders and team members, to agree priorities and what success looks like for this strand specifically

Timetable

  • We will work with you to deliver the outlined workshops and documents, aligning them to key delivery points of the activities in Bucket 1 and Bucket 2

Team & senior oversight

Senior oversight
Brandon Hattiloney and Jock McMillan
Programme coordination
Saira Banu
Training and coaching delivery
James Fisk
Playbook and template production
Rowen Lawson

Measurement & evaluation

Skills journey

  • Baseline: skills review in month 1
  • Mid-point: progress review against baseline in month 3
  • End: closing skills review in month 6, showing measurable change in skills, confidence and tool adoption

Adoption

  • Tracked use of templates and toolkits by the Corporation team
  • A before-and-after summary to share with stakeholders or include in wider reporting on the year's digital communications progress
Investment

Costs at a glance

Every bucket is offered across three tiers. Figures below are package costs; where a media or influencer budget applies it is shown separately so spend on activity is transparent.

WorkstreamBronzeSilverGold
Bucket 1
Financial & professional services		 £81k
+ £2k ad spend		 £128k
+ £15k ads & influencers		 £200k
Bucket 2a
Museum of London opening		 £52k £76k £128k
+ £12k ads & influencers
Bucket 2b
City of London Police		 £52k £88k
+ £7k ads		 £140k
+ £12k influencers
Bucket 3
Capability & knowledge transfer		 £13k — delivered at cost, provided it is not a standalone item

Add-on media and influencer budgets are additional to package costs and are spent on activity (paid amplification, influencer partnerships) rather than fees. Bucket 3 is delivered at cost when combined with delivery work in Buckets 1 and 2.